| Valentines: Banners from the Coney Island Sideshow By Marie A. Roberts November 5, 2005 -- February 26, 2006 Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art Come closer, folks because I'd like you to meet a true Coney Island artist. The Woman Who Lives Outside Of Time Itself! Marie Roberts, the lady who lives in two worlds at once: Past and Present. Painter and Peculiarity. Both classy and crude like a missing Twilight Zone episode starring a mute Kathryn Hepburn...in the back of the bleachers silently sketching...obsessively sketching... Marie Roberts, the world's nicest woman...a total eccentric...a wizard of canvas and paint. On the one hand Marie is a well respected artist and teacher. She is a tenured working professor with students in painting and art history. She shows in galleries. She knows all the stuff about poses and placements and pigments. On the other foot Marie is true Coney Island carney royalty. The Gravesend FDNY has a plaque dedicated to the heroism of her grandfather. Other ancestors include Uncle Lester, the talker of the Dreamland Sideshow and the team of electricians who literally wired Dreamland. Marie lives and works and gardens in the old family home. Sideshow monkeys and snakes are buried in her backyard. Uncle Lester's trunk and relics are still in the attic awaiting the next tour and the trunk is packed with "The Bitter Wonder," more or less Lester's version of snake oil. Marie Roberts is one of the few people alive who can actually speak carney. Her hair is so long it's almost a sideshow act all by itself. I tell you, folks, she lives in two worlds, one sacred/one profane and that is why her art is so interesting. Marie's sideshow banners are not traditional. No way. They are too abstract, too painterly, the choice of paint is wrong, they hang from grommets not leather corners with D rings...and I couldn't care less and I'm the guy who asks Marie to paint sideshow banners for a real honest to God down and dirty Coney Island Sideshow...well, it's not a real traditional sideshow but a Coney Island style arts center and Marie fits like a glove. Her banners are real and advertise a real show. The pigments hold up outdoors in direct sunlight. Screws go through the grommets and the banners don't get stolen at night. She is a rare serious artist who lets her patrons verbally give her "orders" for the image and wording they want and abracadabra she's at work in her backyard studio the very next hour. She's some kind of magician. She's within on exhibition. She's here...she's real...she's on the inside... Dick Zigun, Artistic Director Coney Island USA ============================================================================== One contemporary strategy commonly used by artists is to usurp the methodology of the ethnologist. The artist visits an "underground," a subculture or segment of society, and provides documentation from the gaze of the outsider. The works of Marie A. Roberts are sideshow banner paintings. They feature and advertise the sideshow and its performing oddities- freaks with physical abnormalities or those who do amazing acts like fire eating, or sword swallowing. Roberts does not act within the methodology of ethnology. Neither does she provide mere documentation. While she may be operating in a culture somewhat foreign to us, that of the "carney" sideshow performer, Roberts is not quite an outsider in this world. An academically trained artist and a Professor of Art at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Roberts comes from a family that was intimately involved with sideshow performers. Most well known was her uncle, Lester A. Roberts, the outside "talker" who enticed viewers to come inside and see the show at the Dreamland Circus Sideshow of Coney Island in the 1920's. Lester additionally had his own product for a time, sold under the name of LA Roberts Bitterwonder, "snake oil" promising to cure a wide variety of maladies, until the government suggested he stop selling it. Lester outlived Roberts' father Kenneth Cornelius Roberts, his younger brother who was 50 years old when Marie was born. Lester became Marie's last living relative until his death in 1989 at the age of 91. By then Marie, who still lives in the house she grew up in and had been in the family since 1919, was well acquainted with the stories of the stars of the Dreamland Circus Sideshow, many of whom had stayed in the house when they were in town. The film Freaks of 1932 features many of the performers who were guests of the Roberts'. Becoming the Artist in Residence at the new sideshow of Coney Island USA in 1997 was for Roberts a kind of homecoming that also allowed her to fulfill her long-held wish to make public art. Her paintings amount to Modernism meets "carney" culture. As such, the exhibition of these banner paintings as fine art and bringing them to the "white box" art gallery is an ironic and risky proposition. The paintings are made predominantly for people who probably do not go to art museums. Furthermore, they function in the world with a purpose other than the aesthetic. Despite their function as advertisement these banners are very interesting paintings that deserve formal aesthetic analysis. Roberts is informed by her knowledge of art history and employs the fine artist's awareness of pictorial elements. In her paintings tilted floor planes, for example, in concert with bold paint handling and flattened forms make for shallow spaces hugging the picture plane, not unlike that of the tradition of modernism, building on the work of Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse, and others. Roberts' paintings incorporate French modernist tendencies toward stillness, balance and order, derived from the Enlightenment and the Neo-classical tradition, with the emotive expressiveness of the parallel movement of German Expressionism. As Fauvism is a parallel movement to German Expressionism, so is the work of Roberts parallel in style to that of German Expressionism, particularly to Die Brucke, a movement that ineluded Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rotluff, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Fritz Bleyl. Die Brucke differed from the Fauves' cerebral aesthetics in their use of subjective emotion, dramatic, jagged forms and spiritual content. Pictorially the style of Die Brucke is in the Gothic tradition in that it does not strive to suggest deep or naturalistic space, opting instead towards a more physical presence of the materials of its making. Created with assertive brushwork, bold color, distortions of realistic forms and spontaneity, Roberts' angular forms come together in unified wholes that deliver the strong emotional and spiritual impact of the works of Die Brucke, whose passionate social concerns and utopian thrust contrast with the Fauves' classicized painting. The banner paintings are in the traditional 19th century circus format with bright orange borders that signify the curtains of the stage. Most contain ribbon-like signage featuring the name of the featured performer. In many the encircled word "Alive" indicates the actual presence of the performer rather than an exhibit or preserved specimen. The interiors of the banner paintings usually depict an individual performer or group of performers in the environment of the sideshow stage. In the painting titled for The Amazing Blazing Tyler Fyre, 2002, the performer is shown clothed in formal black, wearing white shirt, bow tie and red lined cape. Fire burns in each of his hands. The forms are simplified, graphic and stylized, with high contrast and hard edges. While painterly, the forms are often outlined in black. Forms are jagged and angular as evidenced by the treatment of the cape and plumes of fire. The surface is emphasized by the employment of modernist methods of visible brushwork and gestural drawing that do not disguise the presence of the artist's hand. The picture's shallow space is occupied by flat forms deployed parallel to the physical canvas surface to indicate its limited illusionistic depth. Although painted flatly the forms maintain tension, thrust and expansiveness. What makes Roberts' banners so fascinating are their contemporary perceptions and innovations built solidly on the modernist tradition. Her banners carry forward Expressionism's emphasis on individuality in defiance of technology's creation of cookie-cutter uniformity. Robert's enthusiasm is expressed through formal means to produce statements that intelligently communicate the excitement of the sideshow and participate in an interesting dialectic with the idea of the advertisement. Rigorous and formal in their pictorial construction, yet eliciting wonder, amazement and joy. Craig Manister Director of Visual Arts Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art ============================================================================== Acknowledgments The Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art is pleased to present the work of Marie A. Roberts. I am grateful for Marie's decision to allow us to bring the banner paintings here and for her tireless efforts to make the exhibition a success. I would like to thank the CEO of Snug Harbor, Fran Paulo Huber, for her enthusiasm and support of the Newhouse Center, and for her interest in Marie's work. Additional thanks are due to Carol Ann Curtis, Cass Freedland, Brian Hagan, Marty Manheimer, Keith Kaminski, JoAnn Mardikos, Kala Sureshkumar, Denise Reyes and the entire staff of Snug Harbor who work towards the success of our exhibitions. Additionally, it is my pleasure to acknowledge Lynnanne O'Connor for providing administrative oversight of the exhibition and to our gallery attendants David Loncle, Jennifer Murphy and Christie Rizzo. Special thanks are due Dick Zigun and the entire Coney Island USA family for their generosity and partnership in this project. Heartfelt gratitude is also extended to the following for their help and encouragement in the preparation of the exhibition in a variety of roles: ToniLee Sangastiano, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Barbara Leskowicz, Laura Jean Watters and Veronica Carle of COAHSI. Craig Manister |